Hidden
by WildwingSuz
Summary: M&S work on the mystery of who or what killed a society matron who moonlighted as a bag lady even as they’re still adjusting to their new relationship.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: ** M&S work on the mystery of who or what killed a society matron who moonlighted as a bag lady even as they're still adjusting to their new relationship.

**Spoilers:** Everything up until Season 7, does not follow canon for anything after "Je Souhaite". This takes place in my own little alternate universe; instead of Scully's pregnancy and Mulder's abduction the X-Files just went on as they had in the years before.

**Author's Notes:** I have not been to Baltimore since I was born there and don't know for sure that there are neighborhoods like I've described. But I _have_ seen that type of abandoned urban area in Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago and Harrisburg, so I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb to put it there. The actual description is of what the neighborhood that I grew up in has looked like since about 1990.  
The idea for this story came, oddly enough, from myself. Though I normally don't write much about my own life and experiences in my stories this one was too good of a casefile to resist. I leave it to the reader to figure out which parts of Crista van Adal's life parallel mine…

A special hug to my steadfast friend and beta reader Alia,  
who let me know that this story was working about halfway  
through when I nearly gave up on it, and insisted on the epilogue  
which I agree was really needed.

HUGE THANKS to my new beta Cory  
who made some outstanding suggestions  
and helped control those contrary commas.  
A writer can _never_ have too many pairs of eyes.

**Hidden  
**By Suzanne L. Feld  
Rated PG-13

**Day 1**

"Mr. van Adal, we're very sorry for your loss," Scully said as she seated herself on the camel-colored sofa.

Mulder nodded as he sat down next to her, just a bit too close she noticed. "I imagine, however, that it's a relief to just have closure."

At first she thought that was a bit of an unfeeling thing to say, but the man sitting across the blonde wood coffee table from them in a pale blue armchair nodded. "Actually it is, Agent Mulder," he said, crossing his hands in his lap. "I had hoped that the news would be better but I'm not surprised, to be honest. If Crista had been alive I knew one of two things would have happened in the last two weeks: she'd have gotten in touch with me one way or another, or I'd have gotten a ransom note. She hated for me to worry like that…"

His voice trailed off and Scully jumped in. "We would like to ask you some questions, sir, if you don't mind."

"Did they find her car yet?" he asked, then heaved a sigh.

"Not that we're aware of, though there is an APB out for it," Mulder replied. "Mr. van Adal—"

"Just Maitlin," he said, gazing dispiritedly out the window behind them. "Do you want to know anything other than what the police asked me when she disappeared? Where was I at the time, were we fighting, were either of us having an affair, was she happy? Well the answers are at work downstairs, no, no, and yes as far as I know." He heaved another long sigh.

Mulder glanced at his partner then cleared his throat. "You work at home, then, Maitlin?"

"Yes, I'm a composer and have my studio in the basement," he said. "Didn't you read all this in the police reports? Why is the FBI getting involved? I thought you folks just dealt with kidnappings and bank robberies and the like."

"We're from a division that deals in the… unexplained, the unusual, shall we say," Scully said, preferring to handle the delicate parts. "And there were some anomalies regarding your wife's death that we'll be investigating."

"They told me that she was strangled from behind by a pair of very large, very strong hands, and that her neck was broken instantly by whomever choked her so she probably didn't feel a thing or even know she was attacked before she died," he said.

Scully refrained from saying anything but after having looked over the original autopsy report was glad that he'd been told this; that was nowhere near the truth other than that she'd been strangled. But she did have to tell him the rest to get his help. "Correct, but did they mention the soft tissue damage after she died?"

His eyes sharpened and moved to her face. "The dog bites? They told me that stray dogs had been at her… body… after she was killed," he said in a clearly bitter tone. "And it wasn't Adam, he's a big dog but he never would have hurt her, he truly loved her. Besides, he was in the yard by the time I came upstairs."

"I'm sure it wasn't him," Scully said quickly, not caring to meet the giant Scottish Deerhound again. The animal appeared to be gentle and friendly, but a dog whose head came nearly to her chest was better left in the other room behind a closed door as far as she was concerned. "No, they're sure it was feral animals but the question has become what kind. It wasn't dogs or urban coyotes," she explained when he looked at her in puzzlement. "The bites are closer to those of a chimp or gorilla," she continued hesitantly. "They're still testing to find out exactly what—"

"Are you saying that a _person_ had been at her?" The poor man turned white and Scully couldn't blame him. "Is that—"

"No, sir, that's not it at all," Mulder quickly interjected. "But that is why we were called in. It could be an important clue to finding who killed your wife and why."

"That's what gets me," the other man said with another sigh. "Crista _had_ no enemies. She didn't have a lot of friends and she tended to be a bit of a loner; she preferred playing video games on the computer to going out with friends, though she did like to shop by herself quite a bit. I simply can't imagine who hated her enough to kill her."

"Sometimes it's not hate," Mulder pointed out. "It could have been a mugging or a carjacking gone wrong; they never did find her purse or ID."

"And that's what we're here to find out," Scully said, rising. Mulder followed her lead a beat later. "We won't take any more of your time, Maitlin. Thank you for seeing us."

The dejected man saw them to the door and, as they went down the front steps, Scully glanced back to see him through the window walking away from the door deeper into the house, head down and shoulders slumped.

"Wasn't him, the Baltimore PD was right about that much," Mulder said as he went around to the driver's side of their Bureau-issued sedan parked at the curb.

"Yeah, I get the same vibe," she agreed as she got into the Ford. "He still seems almost in shock and it's been over two weeks since she disappeared."

"Lost," Mulder said, starting the car. "He seems lost. From everything I read they were a very close couple, and he definitely seems not to know what to do without her."

Scully nodded as he drove out of the exclusive subdivision in the equally exclusive Baltimore suburb of Whitman Oaks that the van Adals lived in. It reminded her a lot of the one in San Diego they'd played house in last year. The sub wasn't gated, but there was a security car parked at the entrance which had stopped them on the way in and now the uniformed driver waved as they left. "Where to next?"

"What time are you going to examine the body?" he asked as he merged onto the freeway heading back to D.C., its proximity being one of the selling points of the ritzy suburb that the van Adals lived in, Scully was sure.

"Three o'clock, so we've got time for lunch on the way back if you're hungry," she said. "I wouldn't mind a bite before going to Quantico."

"I'll never get how you can think food and autopsy in the same breath," he said, glancing over at her. "But sure, it's getting to be that time. Out or in?"

"In, I think, we have time," she said. "And it's on the way back to work."

"What do we have to eat?"

"Hmn… you ate the last of the eggs for breakfast but I think there's soup in the pantry. We need to go grocery shopping, Mulder."

He groaned as he switched freeways. "Doesn't the woman usually do that kind of thing?"

"I'm not Laura Petrie, wiseass, no matter what you may have hoped for when we moved in together," she snapped, biting back a grin. Despite all his grumbling Mulder usually made shopping fun and she wasn't about to let him out of it. "Fifty-fifty, remember?"

"All right, soup it is for lunch and shopping after work tomorrow," he said grudgingly.

"What about tonight?"

"I'm heading over to the Gunmen's for strategy planning, remember?" he said. "We've got the big Quake tournament on Saturday night. I can't let them down."

"Good lord," was all she said, and they rode in comfortable silence until he pulled into the driveway of their leased brownstone.

"There really isn't room with both of our cars here; you should park on the street," she said, getting out and noting that a few inches of the Ford's trunk stuck out over the sidewalk. "You'll get a ticket if one of those little parking guys goes by."

"Need food," he said as they went up the steps. "Feed me, woman."

"Feed yourself, lazy," she retorted as he unlocked the door. "You must be mistaking me for that crazy cop's wife in Connecticut or Vermont or wherever it was who made you Eggs Benedict and veal parmesan or whatever it was while I was freezing my ass off watching frat boys vomit in the gutter."

He laughed and hugged her to him with one arm before letting go, tossing his keys on the table just inside the door and sprinting to the bathroom that was at the base of the stairs. "Back in a bit."

Scully mumbled under her breath as she made her way through the townhouse to the kitchen, which was spotless except for Mulder's coffee cup and dirty plate in the sink. _Once a bachelor always a bachelor, _she thought as she put them in the dishwasher which was barely half-full. _But then he has only been domesticated for a few months…_

"That's _it_, Scully, our killer is a shapeshifter like Ellen Adderly! Or remember Lauren, the werewolf in Michigan who could do it on demand? We've run into this before, now just to find out whether or not—"

Scully was laughing so hard she was doubled over the back of a kitchen chair. "Mulder, look down."

"Oh. Oops." He tucked his shirttail back into his fly and zipped. "Anyway I was saying—"

"I'd bet my next paycheck that you didn't put the seat down, either."

"Scully! Let me finish!"

"I'm almost afraid to ask if you flushed."

"Dammit, Scully!"

She grinned at him as she got two soup bowls down from the cabinet. Only he could be so involved in a case that he didn't remember to zip his fly after using the toilet. "Only if you open cans while you're talking."

He took the can opener from her and went to work on the two cans of Healthy Choice soup she'd set on the counter without a complaint, unusual for him. "Reminding me of that cop's wife made me think of what could have made those odd bite marks. So when you do the autopsy be sure to check all of the bite marks, see if any might be human and morph into animal-like…"

As he went on Scully put the filled bowls in the microwave and turned it on, then leaned back against the counter and watched him pace the kitchen around the table, suit jacket lapels and tie flapping.

"That would explain a lot, Scully, a lot. The only question we would have from there is who and why." He ducked into the fridge then closed it, frowning. "We're out of lunch meat."

"And eggs, and mayonnaise, and your favorite Zesty Italian salad dressing among other things," she said. "I'll make a list for tomor—" Then a thought hit her. "She was last seen leaving the store, right? Did anyone see if they have security cameras?"

Mulder looked over at her from where he was leaning one shoulder against the front of the new refrigerator. "I don't think so, I don't recall reading it in the police report," he said. "What are you thinking?"

"Well, they think she might have gone there right before she disappeared, right? And if they have external cameras we might be able to see which way she went after she left."

"It's in a pretty nice neighborhood so I won't be surprised if they don't."

"But it _is_ a liquor store so I won't be surprised if they do."

The microwave dinged and she reached for it, but Mulder brushed her aside with oven mitts on and said, "Outta my way, woman, I've got this well in hand."

She stepped back, rolling her eyes, and then went to get spoons. Every minute she expected to hear the shatter of breaking china and/or a howl of pain, but when she turned back he had set the bowls neatly on the placemats without mishap. For once.

They ate in companionable silence for a time, then Mulder remarked, "This isn't bad for that low-fat low-sodium low-sugar no-fun stuff you always buy."

She huffed. "You wouldn't know the difference if you hadn't opened the cans!"

"Yes I would, I can always tell when you buy that stuff." He picked up his bowl and drained it, then set his spoon in it and looked over at her. "We've still got half an hour."

She raised a brow, getting up to put the bowls in the dishwasher. "We do, don't we? And what do you suggest we do with that extra time?"

When she turned around after closing the dishwasher he was right there and without touching her, leaned down and whispered into her ear. As he leaned back she grinned up at him, then they bolted and raced each other into the living room. "Hey, no fair, I'm wearing heels," she yelled as he hit the couch first.

"Never slowed you down before," he smirked, picking up the remote as she landed beside him, hitting the power button for both the TV and VCR. "My choice."

"Oh, Mulder, I'm really tired of 'Best NBA Jump Shots" she moaned as the paused picture came up on the TV screen.

"And I'm not watching reruns of 'I Love Lucy' again," he said stubbornly.

_Can't outrace 'em, outsmart 'em_, Scully thought with a small grin. "Oh, Mulder?" she said sweetly, getting up on her knees next to him.

"What?" he said suspiciously, eyeing her with concern. Scully didn't like to be bested and was sometimes far too sneaky for her—or his, perhaps—own good.

"I have yet another idea," she said, putting both hands on his shoulder and leaning over to whisper in his ear this time.

"That's more like it!" he said enthusiastically. The remote went flying, shortly to be followed by certain items of their clothing.

***

"We were bad," Mulder grinned over at her, straightening his tie as she locked the front door behind them.

"We were good, _then_ bad," she smiled back knowingly, putting her keys in her blazer pocket. "Or is it bad, then good… and no less good for being quick… Mulder, is that a ticket on the pool car's windshield?"

"Oh, sh—!"


	2. Chapter 2

***

"No, no, we have no need for camera here," the heavyset man behind the counter said in a heavy Middle Eastern accent. "Good neighborhood, we know most people, good people."

"So you've never had any type of trouble?" Mulder said, leaning one hip against the counter.

"Trouble? Yeah, trouble sometimes, drunks wanting to buy booze and kids shoplifting," he told Mulder. "Nothing more than that, though."

"How often did you see Mrs. van Adal?" Scully asked.

"The nice lady the police show me picture of? I see her often, usually for milk, bread, butter, that sort of thing, sometimes just to buy candy bar or gum, rarely cigarettes, never lottery or booze," the shopkeeper said, shaking his head. "People here, they don't understand lottery, you know what I call lottery?"

She knew Mulder couldn't resist and sure enough he rose to the bait. "What's that?"

"Tax for people who no do math," the man said, then bellowed a laugh. "We make no money off lottery, either, it just to get people in there, and they want it."

They both smiled politely, then Mulder said, "Did, ah, did she seem to be acting odd at all that day?"

"No, police ask me same, I tell them same," he said. "Got customer. Excuse me."

As the heavyset man moved over to help someone at the counter Mulder turned to her. "Well, it was a good idea but no such luck," he said, then glanced at his watch. "We should get back, you can drop me at the Hoover and head on to Quantico."

"Didn't you want to stand in on the autopsy?" she asked.

"Ah, no, I have some, er, paperwork to do," he said, not looking at her.

"Yeah, I don't blame you, it's going to be a gooey one," she sighed as she put her notebook away.

***

"Well, those were definitely not human bite marks," Scully announced as she entered the office then saw that Mulder wasn't alone; a tall, dark-suited figure sat with its back to her in the chair in front of the desk. "And there were some other anomalies—Oh, I'm sorry for interr—"

"It's just me, Agent Scully," their boss said, turning around in his seat briefly. "Which case is this regarding?"

"Crista van Adal," Mulder said, pushing a folder across the desk towards him. "Suburban Baltimore woman killed two weeks ago and dumped in an abandoned house in the city, found yesterday by a couple of kids who chased their dog into the house then ran screaming down the street. Scully just finished the autopsy, right?"

She gave him The Look while Skinner was busy with the file as she shed her trench coat and hung it on the coat rack behind the door. "That's correct. The local M.E. had already done one but I wanted to look her over for myself, not that I found much more than he did," she admitted. "But I did examine the bites like you asked, Mulder, and none of them are human or even close although the teeth pattern does seem vaguely similar to a gorilla although without elongated canines. _Vaguely_. And the bite strength is closer to that of a crocodile than a hominid."

"No fangs, but a meat eater," Mulder mused.

"So what made them?" Skinner asked, looking up from the file as she went to perch on the edge of the counter beside and slightly behind Mulder's chair.

She shrugged, folding her arms. "The jury's still out on that, but whatever it was had fairly strong jaws and sharp teeth," she said. "Even after two weeks of decomposition the sheer rage of whomever or whatever did that to her was clear. They hated her."

"Or she was just exceptionally tasty," Mulder said. The room was eerily silent for a few beats before he added, "Now we get to figure out why someone who lived such a quiet, normal life was so hated."

Scully shook her head. "Mulder, the one thing we've consistently discovered over the years is that the more normal they look, the less normal most people are."

Mulder turned to glance at her and Skinner saw the look that passed between them. It was the same type of look that he'd been seeing for the past eight years when they shared an unspoken idea which often seemed to solve the case. With that look any worries he might have had about their partnership were allayed; there was nothing more than the job on their minds. Had he known about their afternoon break, however, he might not have been so relieved.

***

"Okay, now I'm officially confused," Mulder said, looking back and forth between the two pieces of paper. "Are you sure we're talking about the same woman here?"

"I'm pretty sure," Scully said, leaning next to his shoulder and pointing at her neatly-typed copy that had just come out of the printer. "Crista van Adal nee Cooper, age forty-four, birthdate March twelfth in Detroit, Michigan. Height, five-seven, weight at time of death, one-sixty. Muscular; she worked out, jogged, walked. Married for twenty-six years to Maitlin van Adal, no children, no known problems in the marriage. Husband makes upward of two hundred thou per year so she doesn't have to work. Graduated valedictorian of her inner-city high school class, attended two semesters of community college on a full scholarship before dropping out, apparently to get married. No police record other than juvenile and that was mostly for panhandling and petty theft. Worked a series of temporary seasonal jobs over the years, apparently for pin money, and volunteered for quite a few charities though animal ones seemed to be her primary focus."

"And yet she was found wearing raggedy old clothes that you'd except to see on a street person but with Victoria's Secret underwear underneath, a three-thousand-dollar Omega watch, and real sapphire earrings roughly valued at around five hundred dollars all intact," Mulder said, pointing at his handwritten notes. "And there was no evidence of sexual assault unless you count the bites taken out of her breasts and thighs on top of the general ravaging of her corpse."

"And don't forget her gluteus maximus," Scully said.

"Well, how could I—according to you they were mostly missing," he said, glancing sideways at her. "Talk about taking a bite out of your ass."

She deliberately ignored his gallows humor. "So, we have a fairly wealthy, respected matron who volunteered at charities yet apparently wandered around at times wearing dirty old clothes over expensive underwear and thousands of dollars worth of jewelry," Scully summed up. "I simply can't believe no one noticed her dressed that way."

"Mr. Naveedi—our helpful shopkeeper—told me that she wasn't wearing those clothes when she was in the store that day nor had he ever seen her dressed like that," he said, moving his finger down on the paper. "He doesn't remember what she was wearing but he's sure it wasn't a stained sweatshirt and ragged jeans."

Scully moved one of the pages aside to show a picture of Crista van Adal taken just days before her death. In it she was sitting at a white wrought-iron table on what appeared to be a deck over a wide expanse of blue water, smiling happily at the camera with a wineglass raised to it as well. Though she could only be seen from the waist up, she was wearing a multicolored silk blouse with a gold, diamond-encrusted heart pendant around her neck. Her earrings couldn't be seen due to her thick jet-black hair, which was neatly coiffed in a style similar to Scully's pageboy but long enough that it fell just past her shoulders and brushed the sides of her face. It was lightly streaked with grey, the only sign of her age; she looked to be maybe thirty-two, tops, rather than her true age of over ten years older.

"I can't believe that this is the same woman I autopsied," she said with sadness clear in her voice. "If I didn't know better I'd have thought the woman on the table was a vagrant who'd lived on the streets most of her life. But both fingerprints and dental records match; that was her."

"Her prints were in the system?"

"She volunteered for the city of Aldridge's animal shelter which is through the police department and they did a background check and fingerprinted her," Scully explained. "In fact she was very highly regarded there and affectionately known as the Cat Lady. She came in three or four times a week to work with the cats, getting them ready for adoption and even cleaning cat boxes when it was needed. Apparently her husband is allergic to cat hair and this was how she managed to be around them."

"Pretty thorough, there, Agent Scully," he said, bumping her shoulder with his. Only when he was sitting and she leaning over the desk like this could he do that.

"Mulder, be serious. I think our next step is to map out the nearest street people hangouts around her neighborhood and show them her picture and see if any of them have seen her recently. If she was masquerading as a vagrant for whatever reason, that's the next logical place to look."

"We should probably show them her autopsy photo," Mulder mused. "I doubt they'd recognize her like that," he said, gesturing to the picture on the desk. "From what you said, you didn't."

"I had considered having us go in as her friends looking for her," Scully said slowly, "But we can't show that autopsy picture around dressed like this. They'd know we're cops."

"Why not do both?"

She looked at him and raised her brows. "I guess we could at that," she said. "But who goes which way?"

"Who has more and better grungies?" he grinned down at her as he stood up and stretched. "Despite your swiping _my_ favorite Knicks shirt as a nightgown, I'm sure a check of our dresser drawers would yield the answer to that fairly quickly."

She huffed, but instead of arguing began to gather together the file. "First thing tomorrow morning?"

"I guess—why not tonight?" he said as he moved away.

"Because it's nearly six and I want to get going. Don't forget, grocery shopping tomorrow night."

"But—but—"

"But me no buts, Mulder. You promised."

"I know someone who has no butt if that helps."

This time she did grab the nearest item at hand and threw a pencil at him. She was certain that no jury in the land would have convicted her had it stuck in him somewhere but luckily he dodged out of its way just in time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 2  
**"Oh, yeah, I know that lady. She work in the soup kitchen over at St. Katherine's. Nice lady, cool, don't be looking down her nose at us."

Scully thanked the ragged man and moved along. This was the tenth or twelfth positive ID of Crista van Adal but not in the way they'd hoped. Apparently she'd been quite the philanthropist with her time; according to the street people Scully had talked to she was active in the soup kitchens, homeless shelters and the like. It was known that she wouldn't give cash, but she was up for a ride to the nearest shelter for those who needed it and when it got cold she often went around and passed out blankets and winter clothing from the back seat of her Buick.

And most of the people on the streets she'd talked to so far, at least the ones who would open up to Scully, noted that she'd always seemed relaxed and comfortable around the homeless, like she understood them, and had never treated them like dirt or second-class citizens.

That was very telling, she thought as she walked back to the pool Ford parked a couple blocks away, passing more boarded-up storefronts than not. The ones that were open for business seemed to consist of hair salons that specialized in braiding and fades, music stores with rap blasting from tinny outdoor speakers, bars with names like "The Dewdrop Inn", and tiny storefront restaurants with bars on the windows that advertised home cooking. Almost everything was covered in graffiti as well. Though she was stared at as she walked no one bothered her; either word had gotten out that she was a Fed or it was obvious from her dress. Either was fine with her; despite her training and the Sig Sauer in the holster at the small of her back Scully was uneasy in this neighborhood being a clear interloper and unwelcome.

Most people from Crista's present neck of the woods weren't comfortable around homeless people but that was the world she'd been raised in, Scully knew. Crista van Adal had grown up in a very bad part of Detroit, product of an alcoholic single mother who had more often been homeless than not. Though she was caught by Children's Services and put in foster homes multiple times, she always seemed to end up back at her mother's side until the older woman's death when Crista was eleven. She had worked hard in high school to get out of the inner city before she and Maitlin had met at a party in Lansing when he'd been going to Michigan State. At that time she wasn't anywhere near as polished as she was to become, but he must have seen the promise in her and married her. It wasn't until after he'd graduated that they had moved to his home town in a suburb of Baltimore but it wasn't long after that before he was pulling in a six-figure salary and Crista didn't have to work if she didn't want to. Quite a change from the grimy-faced begging and stealing street child she had grown up as, Scully thought.

As she drove over to pick Mulder up Scully wondered why Crista's husband hadn't mentioned her work with the soup kitchens and homeless shelters when he'd given the police all those details on her volunteering at the animal shelters and the cats and all that. Could it be, she wondered, because he was embarrassed for them to know of her background no matter how important it was?

She had driven twice around the six-block area where she'd dropped Mulder earlier before she spotted him half-hidden in a doorway, huddled together with two other equally tall men in jeans and ragged jackets. She pulled up to the curb and honked and, as he climbed in, heard the other men calling out to him in joking voices though she couldn't make out the words. Although she'd never admit it to him, the sight of him in threadbare jeans that were tight in all the right places, an old grey t-shirt, and his familiar old black leather bomber jacket got her heart going just a little faster.

"What was that all about?" she asked as she pulled away.

"Oh, my new buds there were teasing about the chain on my doghouse being reeled in," he grinned, stretching one arm across the back of the seat. "Told them you were my old lady picking me up on her way home from work."

"Oh for God's sake, Mulder… did you find out anything other than perhaps a new place to shoot hoops?"

He laughed. "Yeah, actually, although it took a while. The first couple dozen people I asked didn't seem to know her but then I ran into an old man who said he'd seen her by the bus station once or twice waiting at the city bus stop. He did mention that she wasn't a regular and didn't hone in on the usual panhandlers territory there. Still, I thought we could check it out. How about you?"

As she headed for the Greyhound depot Scully filled him in, adding in her suspicions about the husband. Mulder concurred, agreeing that it seemed likely that he clearly didn't want her hanging out with the homeless. "Maybe he was afraid she'd go back to her old ways," he added.

"That does seem to be what she ended up doing without his knowledge," she agreed.

"You can take the street kid out of the 'hood but—" When she groaned he paused and looked over at her with the too-innocent look that drove her up the wall. "What?"

She just gave him an exasperated look and drove on.

After some discussion Scully dropped him at the side door then parked in the lot and walked towards the bus station's main entrance with her picture of Crista van Adal ready. But as she passed the long-term lot she saw a car that seemed vaguely familiar. A few steps later she hesitated, then stopped and turned around. Sure enough it was a burgundy Buick Regal, no more than two years old, lightly coated with dust. Though she couldn't see the license plate she was fairly sure of what she'd found.

If that's not Crista van Adal's car I'll eat one of Mulder's shoes, Scully thought as she hurried to the bus depot to get her partner. _Without_ catsup.

***


	4. Chapter 4

***

_I'm glad I didn't have to consume any footwear with or without condiments, _Scully thought some hours later as she and Mulder finished combing over Crista's car in the impound yard. Unfortunately, finding her car wasn't as much of a break as they'd hoped; there was absolutely not a clue that they or the FBI crime lab guys could find.

"Well, we didn't get anything from the car but now we know where she started from," Mulder said, stripping off his latex gloves. "All we have to do is begin canvassing the neighborhoods around the bus station."

"But what if she didn't hang around there but took a bus to someplace else in the city?" Scully pointed out. "The guy you talked to said he saw her at the city bus stop, remember?"

"Yeah, I'll try to find him tomorrow and see if he remembers which bus she was taking even if it is a long shot. Well, at least it's a starting point," Mulder said. "Although I did think we'd find at the very least a change of clothes, a suitcase or overnight bag, something like that."

"Wait—if she was driving from Whitman Oaks into downtown Baltimore and parking in the bus station she wouldn't have left her clothes in the car. She'd likely have changed in the ladies' room and stored her bag—"

"In a coin locker!" Mulder finished for her excitedly. "So there's got to be a key somewhere."

"Unfortunately it's probably in her purse, wherever that is," Scully pointed out.

"But wouldn't she leave her purse in a locker too?" he said logically as they walked back to their bureau car.

"Probably. In that case, do you think the key was on her? In one of her pockets?" Scully said as they got into a grey Tempo, today's pool car, which smelled faintly but annoyingly of corn chips and salsa despite the equal aroma of cleaning fluid. "Nothing was found on her body, but her clothes were badly ripped—her jeans were almost in strips."

"I think it could have been. We should go look at where she was found and see if they missed anything."

"I don't think we should go tonight, Mulder. It's probably not a bad idea to go first thing tomorrow morning instead of when it's getting dark. Do you really want to go stumbling around in an abandoned house at night when we don't have to?"

He sighed. "Fine. In the meantime what do you say to heading home?"

"Yeah, may as well. I want to go by the office and grab my laptop first."

"Sure, I'll drop you off at home and then I can head over to—"

"Don't even think it," she said immediately, ready for his evasion tactics. "We _are_ going grocery shopping tonight. You got out of it last night but not tonight. We'll go home and change and head right back out. Maybe get something to eat on the way, I know better than to go shopping on an empty stomach."

"Scully…!"

"I'm holding you to your word, Mulder, you can whine all you want but you're not getting out of it," she said as he parked the pool car next to her Camry, which they had driven in together this morning. Though they preferred to walk into work since they were now less than two miles away, late summer was turning into fall and the decision was made depending on the weather report.

As they got out of the Tempo he mumbled something which she chose to ignore, heading for the elevator. But when they were standing in front of the doors waiting for the car to arrive he said, "Is there anything I can say, do, or offer you to get me out of this?"

"Nope."

"A month of foot rubs?"

"Nope."

"How about even more earth-shattering orgasms than I already give you?" he leaned over and said low into her ear just as the doors opened. The car was, thankfully, empty.

"You do that and I'll probably collapse from exhaustion," she replied with a grin up at him. He couldn't resist leaning down to kiss her despite the fact that they were only going up one floor. Luckily, however, it was well after six and the building was mostly empty, though even if there'd been a group of tourists visiting the Hoover in the elevator like there often was that probably wouldn't have stopped him.

"What was that for?" she asked as they left the elevator and headed down the hall to the office.

"Just because I felt like it," he grinned down at her, pulling his keys out of his pocket. When he thought of all the times he'd wished he could just kiss her like that and hadn't been able to do it made him twice as determined to now that he could, and to hell with who was around or what they thought. Within reason, he amended; Skinner knew that they were living together but it hadn't been announced to the rest of the Bureau that he knew of. Not that it was any of their damn business, anyway.

Scully shook her head as she turned on the light and they moved into the office. "We agreed no intimate contact at work," she said unconvincingly even as her lips tingled from that brief, sweet kiss. It was all she could do not to leap into his arms for a longer, more thorough one.

He guffawed. "Compared to our usual nightly gymnastics how can you call that little peck intimate?"

She smiled back at him even as her cheeks pinkened slightly. Talk about a one-track mind! "You know what I mean," she scolded, packing up her laptop even as he shuffled through desk drawers, apparently looking for something but, she thought, more likely just trying to look busy while she was getting her things together.

He was quiet on the way home, not arguing any further and seeming to be in a fair enough mood—or at least he wasn't openly sulking—as they changed into casual clothes then headed out again. She was still waiting for more protests as they ate at a favorite local restaurant and then headed for the 24-hour supermarket in Alexandria she preferred to shop at.

As they got a cart and started into the store she couldn't take it anymore. "Okay, Mulder, what's the deal?" she said suspiciously.

"What?" he looked at her blankly, not even noticing as they passed a freestanding display of baseball-themed bowls and plates that normally, she knew, he would have dove at and she'd have had to talk him out of. "Something wrong?"

"You," she said bluntly. "That wasn't much of a protest, and you haven't tried to distract me once, not even with sex while we were changing. What gives?"

He ran one hand through his dark, already mussed hair. "I've been thinking about Crista van Adal and how she apparently lived a whole secret second life her husband knew nothing about," he admitted, leaning on the cart's handle with crossed arms as they reached the produce section and Scully stopped to begin picking over the bagged salads. "He seems to think she was out shopping or working for charities all the times she was really dressed like a bag lady and hangin' with her homies. The thing that gets me is, wasn't that dangerous for her? Wasn't she worried about being attacked or raped?"

"I've wondered that myself," Scully said moving on to the tomatoes. This late in the summer there was an excellent selection and it didn't take her long to choose a few good ones. Though she was lukewarm towards them, the one way she knew to get Mulder to eat salad was to make sure that he had a piece of tomato in every bite. "I was on alert the whole time I was out in the Bayside district asking about her. Man or woman, I can't imagine wandering around down there with no gun or my hand-to-hand combat training. If I was a civilian I'd be scared half to death to even drive through there."

He nodded slowly, his eyes faraway. "It meant a lot to her, but we don't know why and that may be the key to finding out who killed her," he said. "There's got to be something more than just appearing to be homeless that appealed to her. Once we find that, I'm betting we'll find our killer."

"You could be right," she agreed, adding bags of cucumbers, green onions, and radishes to the cart.

His eyes cleared as he gazed down at what she'd bought so far. "You needed me for this, Scully? Seems to me you're grazing the rabbit food just fine on your own."

She grinned, relieved he was back to normal. Even complaints were better than that uncertain silence; at least this way she didn't have to wait for the other shoe to drop.


	5. Chapter 5

**Day 3  
**The next morning they had a meeting with the IT department regarding their request for new computer equipment, but they were out and heading for the neighborhood where Crista's body had been found before eleven a.m. "So, what do you think, will we get it?" Scully asked as she left the freeway a short time later in Baltimore proper.

"I suspect you'll get a docking station and monitor for your laptop, but I doubt they'll replace my CPU," Mulder said morosely, folding his arms and slouching down in the passenger seat. "If they try to upgrade that thing to XP I'm going to lodge a formal protest; it barely runs Windows 95 now. Better to leave it as is."

"Yeah, but you can't open the PDFs that they send our memos in now, hence the need for upgrading," Scully pointed out. "I'm still annoyed that they won't let me use my Mac laptop anymore; I never had a problem with it."

"I know," he agreed. Then he sat up straighter, looking around. "Holy shit, this looks like goddamn Beirut!"

Scully nodded but didn't answer as she drove along slowly looking for the address.

The neighborhood they were in now did, indeed, almost look as if it had been bombed, with many empty lots and abandoned houses as well as half-burned-down ones that had been extinguished but not torn down. The houses that did appear to be occupied had bars on all the doors and windows that they could see, often as run-down as the abandoned ones with overgrown grass and cracked sidewalks with weeds growing up through them. There were very few cars parked either on the street or in the driveways and those that were scattered almost haphazardly around appeared to be abandoned and non-working, often sitting on flats or even missing tires.

There were little to no signs of life as they pulled up before a decrepit single-story bungalow; the only thing he could see moving was a slat-sided dog wandering away down the sidewalk until it disappeared around the corner. It was a once-nice little brick house, probably built in the mid-fifties Mulder estimated, but it appeared to have been abandoned for at least a year or more. Every window was shattered, the broken front door hanging open, and the front of the small porch roof had collapsed onto the broken and cracked cement stairs. Shingles from the roof littered the yellowed, overgrown grass on the three sides that they could see. The yellow police tape around the porch roof posts had fallen or been cut and flapped dispiritedly in the occasional breeze.

"I'm not sure this is the one since I can't see the address, but it's between two-oh-eight and two-twelve so I assume it's two-ten," Scully said as they sat in the pool Ford—luckily not the corn chip Tempo today but a late-model Crown Vic—and gazed at the decrepit house.

"Well—let's do it," Mulder finally said, getting out. "Although I don't wonder if we might not do better to wear decon suits going in there. This place looks more dangerous than the alien ship I rescued you from."

"Can't say I disagree even if I don't remember that," Scully said as they walked up the crazily cracked, weed-choked sidewalk. "Glad I wore a pantsuit and lower heels today."

"Yeah, I am looking at the top of your head instead of your forehead today," he said, dodging the expected slap that didn't come. That told him right here how serious and focused—or just concerned—she was.

Together they paused before the porch and Scully bent over to peer between the broken roof and cracked cement porch. "I don't think we should go in this way, I'm assuming there's a side or back door," she said, straightening up and not noticing where his eyes had been—which probably _would_ have earned him that slap. "What do you think, Mulder?"

"I think you're right, but we'd better announce our presence and do a walk-through first in case there are any… residents… of any kind," he said as they walked through the dry overgrown grass to the side of the house. "Could be human, could be rodent, but knowing us it'd be both in one."

She snorted laughter, nodding in agreement. "Rat-man instead of fluke-man," she said as they approached a side door. The outer aluminum door was bent and broken, hanging open, while the inner door appeared to be completely gone other than a few shards of wood hanging from the rusted hinges. There was no police caution tape on this entrance, likely removed rather than not put on in the first place. Mulder reached for his gun with a meaningful look at Scully and she got hers out from the holster in the small of her back, though neither took the safety off. He leaned forward and yelled, "FBI! Anyone in this house announce your presence!"

They both listened for a few moments but no voice or noise answered his shout. He glanced at her and she tilted her head forward, indicating that he should continue. They stepped onto the landing together, which led both up to another doorway and down into darkness. Scully jerked her chin at the upper stairs then pulled her flashlight from her blazer pocket and, turning it on, started down the stairs with her gun pointed up.

Mulder watched her for a moment then with a mental shake turned the other way and ascended the few stairs leading from the landing to the main floor. She was still his partner and no matter how nervous it sometimes made him, he couldn't refuse to let her do her job just because they were now lovers and lived together. How many times had he watched Scully walk away from him into darkness like that? He knew damn well that if he tried to nursemaid her she'd kick the living shit out of him and then, probably, transfer away from the X-Files. And he didn't want that.

The main floor was unoccupied, as was the low attic with its trapdoor staircase down although there were plenty of signs of previous occupation by the homeless and drug addicts using the abandoned house as a crash pad. As he was heading back to the side door Scully came into the kitchen from the back stairway, holstering her gun then straightening her blazer. "Creepy, but nothing down there," she said. "Did you find where she was discovered?"

"No, I just made sure the house was empty," he said, also putting his weapon away. "As I recall, it was in the basement."

"No, it was in one of the main floor bedrooms, wasn't it?" she said, trying desperately to remember what the police report had said. She was certain it had mentioned something about a bedroom.

"Who's the one with the eidetic memory? I can _see_ the page in my mind's eye," he told her with no attitude as they ascended the back stairs. "Were there bedrooms in the basement?"

"Yeah, two," she said, relieved. They were both right and there would be no one-upmanship today—for a change. "This probably was a nice little house before it was abandoned. Fully finished basement with carpeting and paneled walls; laundry room, bar, family room, two bedrooms down there."

"They apparently made the most of the space they had," Mulder remarked, leading the way into the basement this time. "If I'm not mistaken it was the first bedroom, the one on the right."

Scully tucked her flashlight under her arm and pulled two pairs of latex gloves out of her blazer pocket, handing one to Mulder. They both put them on and then moved through the doorway. "We'd better be careful, there could be knives or razors or needles in that mess."

Thrown to one side of the windowless room was a shredded, bloodstained mattress with piles of dirty clothes and ragged blankets scattered around it. "Jesus, didn't the CSI guys take any of this?"

"Yeah, but just the stuff around the body because it was determined that so many people had been in and out of this room both before and after she was dumped here that they couldn't find anything usable outside of that area. I'm assuming they went through this stuff, though."

"I can see why. She was found over here?" Mulder said, moving to the far corner of the room. The ragged, threadbare carpet was so filthy that it was impossible to tell what color it had been when new, but the huge bloodstain was unmistakable. Dark dried blood was also splashed on the light blond paneled walls in the corner, although none of it was higher than waist level. "Looks like she was dead when they tore into her."

She nodded. "There's no spray from a pumping heart, that's from being manually thrown when whomever ravaged her with teeth after she was dead," Scully agreed, moving up beside him and pointing at the splatters on the walls. Then she looked around, studying the ripped mattress and piles of material. "If I recall correctly, the kids who found her were chasing a dog?"

"Yeah, apparently their pit bull ran into the house and they followed it down here, though how they saw a thing in this darkness I don't know," Mulder said, following where she was looking. "The neighbor across the street saw them and the dog running out of the house and called the police, she thought they were being chased. According to one of the BPD patrolmen who answered the call he could smell decomposing human flesh the minute they stepped into the house and backed out and called CSI before they even saw the body."

"Although how they did over the stench of mildew and urine I'm not sure," Scully said. The house really did reek, though they had both gotten used to it only minutes after entering. "Well, we may as well sift through some of this though I'm not sure it'll do us any good. I'm sure CSI found anything worth having, and they didn't find a key."

"Can't hurt to try," he said, and together they knelt and began to carefully sort through the piles of material, picking up small folds with the tips of their fingers. Most of it was stiff with age and mold—some decomposing to the point of disintegration—and it crossed his mind that perhaps they should be wearing masks. In the next moment he heard a faint _clink_ and paused, putting a hand on Scully's arm and saying, "What was that?"

"What?" she said, letting go of the threadbare, mildew-spotted towel she had been about to move and glancing back over her shoulder where she could just see faint daylight at the other end of the basement. "Did you hear something?"

"I heard something metal," he said, handing her his flashlight. "Keep this on my hands."

She still had hers tucked under one arm and left it there as well as doing as asked. He lifted the towel she'd just dropped with one hand and reached for a rip in the ragged carpet with the other, carefully moving the mildewed material aside and lifting it until clearly illuminated in the flashlight beams was a short, fat key with a beige plastic handle.

"How do you like that?" Mulder said, digging it out and picking it up, holding it in the flashlight beam. "I didn't really think we'd find it!"

"Told you it was worth a try," Scully teased, handing him his flashlight as they stood up and he put the key in his pocket. They both stripped off their gloves and stuffed them in their pockets and then she preceded him out. "Let's get the hell out of here."

But as they rounded the side of the house she stopped dead and he nearly bumped into her back. Standing around and leaning on their car were a half-dozen young black men, all dressed in low-riding baggy pants with a variety of oversize shirts and about fifty-fifty between expensive gym shoes or heavy boots. Without a pause Mulder reached into his jacket and yanked out his ID, holding the open folder high. "FBI," he said as he stepped around her to walk confidently towards them. "Did any of you see the—"

Without a word the men dissipated, mumbling among themselves but not looking back as they trooped off down the street. "Jesus, Mulder, you could have been shot!" Scully hissed as she unlocked and open yanked the driver's door. "What in the hell did you think you were doing?!"

"Confidence, Scully, confidence," he said as he got in. "You act like a victim, you get treated like a victim. Sadly enough I'm sure every one of those guys has had run-ins with the police at least once and I guessed correctly that they simply wouldn't feel like dealing with us. I doubt they realized that there were cops in the house, though you'd think the car would have given us away."

"I'll take your word for it," Scully said, driving away in the opposite direction from the one that the men had disappeared in without a look back.

At the bus station they found and opened the locker and sure enough it contained a small, old-fashioned overnight bag, a brown-and-tan Coach purse, and a neatly folded Gucci jacket. Scully stood looking at the contents for a few moments then said, "Mulder, the purse and jacket are each worth upwards of five hundred dollars or better, but the suitcase has got to be from the nineteen-seventies. This is Crista van Adal's all right."

"I wonder where in the hell she found that suitcase?"

Scully nodded. "Probably a resale shop or the Salvation Army. I haven't seen flowers like those since grade school," she said, remembering how everything had been decorated like that in her childhood, big fat stylized daisies in primary colors featuring lots of pink and brown and orange. "You going to call for fingerprinting?"

"Yeah, give me a couple minutes," he said, still gazing into the locker.

Leaving him to commune with the contents of the locker, Scully walked over to the drinking fountain near the restrooms and got a drink then returned to find him on his cell phone. "They'll be here in about fifteen so why don't we go have some lunch while they're working?" he suggested as he pushed down the antenna of the cell after hanging up. "There's a Burger King right over there."

She gazed up at him. "Burger King, right. Mulder, the last time I ate fast food with you I had indigestion for hours afterward despite Tums, Maalox, and Zantec. Is CSI taking the locker's contents in?"

"Yeah…"

"Good. Then as soon as they arrive we can go find a decent place to eat and by the time we get back to the office they'll probably have cleared us to go through her things," she said reasonably.

He heaved a sigh, glancing longingly at the fast food storefront on the other side of the long, thin building. "Scully…"

She smiled up at him as he looked back at her. In the last few months she had discovered that very often simply being nice got far better results than her old stubborn arguing, which she now saved for special occasions when it was really needed to knock some sense into his hard head. "Mulder, what would you rather have? A thin, cold, assembly-line fast-food burger or one of The Farmhouse's double-decker bacon cheeseburgers with an onion chip tower?"

His hazel eyes lit up. "Only if you split the onion chips with me, I hate to see them wasted."

"Why do you think I mentioned it?"


	6. Chapter 6

***

Scully ate far too much at lunch, as she knew she would because she always did at that restaurant. She was much more in the mood for a nap than for spending the afternoon going through the contents of Crista van Adal's purse and overnight bag. Just the thought of curling up with Mulder on his old black couch in their den nearly made her suggest it, and it took a force of will she rarely had to use to stop herself from doing so. Sometimes on Sundays when she came home from afternoon mass he'd be sprawled out dozing there, the New York Times puzzle page crumpled on the floor, and she'd join him for a nap; it was as close to heaven as she thought she might ever come.

They had the contents of Crista's locker in their office by two just as she'd predicted, and slowly unpacked her purse and suitcase on the counter in the back. Finally Mulder said, "This is about as exciting as when we tossed her car."

Scully sighed, rubbing her forehead with the fingertips of one hand and nodding in agreement. "She wore nice clothes when she wasn't moonlighting as a bag lady," she remarked, flicking the edge of a Windfjord cardigan that she knew cost upwards of $200 and was imported from Norway. There was one in the window of her favorite clothing store that she always eyeballed, but it had no place at work and instead she always spent the money on a new work suit. When Mulder had once mentioned that she couldn't afford a new suede coat on a G-woman's salary he'd had no idea that this type of sweater was what she really lusted after. "Although I do find it odd that she was still wearing her watch and earrings."

"Maybe she forgot?" Mulder hazarded as he held up the black leather Gucci jacket. "Good god, this is probably worth a quarter of what each of us makes in a year."

"I'm impressed—you know your women's clothes," Scully said with some surprise, pushing the folded sweater away and reaching for the purse.

"I know quality no matter what it is," he said, winking at her as he laid the jacket over the back of the chair she usually sat in.

Other than the expensive clothing and some equally high-priced makeup in the purse they found nothing out of the ordinary; together they packed everything away again, handed it back over to the evidence techs to be stored, and headed out to talk to Maitlin van Adal one more time.

But when they arrived at his house there was a blue minivan in the driveway and boxes stacked on the front porch, the inner door open. Mulder knocked on the door frame and called his name into the house.

A tall, thin blonde woman appeared on the other side of the screen door so suddenly that both agents jumped in surprise. "Yes, can I help you?" she said in a cold manner. "We're not interested in—"

"Agents Mulder and Scully from the FBI," Mulder said, holding his badge up next to his face. "Is Mr. van Adal in?"

"Oh! I'm _so_ sorry!" Her manner went from haughty to ingratiating in two seconds flat. "Maitlin told me about you, do you have any news—"

"And you are…?" Scully said, tucking her ID away.

"Gertje Fidrych, uh, Maitlin's sister, please call me Gert. I'm helping him clean out Crista's things, he can't bear having them around anymore now knowing that she's gone," the woman said, still talking though the screen door.

"May we come in?" Scully said. "Is he here?"

"Um, no, he had to go into the city," she said. "And I really can't let anyone into the house without his permission…"

"We understand," Mulder said easily. "He's got our card; have him call either one of us when he gets back. We've got some of her possessions we'd like to return and a last few questions."

"I can take her things if you'd like," she said. "What is it?"

They glanced at each other and then Scully said, "The victim's belongings can only be released to her husband. Just be sure he calls us when he returns."

The blonde's face twisted into a grimace and she threw her nose into the air. "Well, fine then. I was _just_ trying to _help_." To their surprise she slammed the inner door in their faces.

Mulder looked down at his partner with brows raised. "A wee bit touchy are we?"

"Not exactly a people person," Scully agreed as they turned away. Her eyes fell on the contents of one of the open boxes and she paused, then leaned down and plucked a small gold-topped trophy out of it. "Mulder, look at this. I think it explains a lot."

He took the statue from her hands. "Region A Black Belt Champion," he read. "Nineteen eighty-five. She did martial arts?"

"Karate, I think, looking at these." Scully crouched down and sorted through the box, which was a mishmash of photo albums, trophies, ribbons and rosettes, and books. "She also showed that giant dog of theirs in dog shows _and_ won prizes for her canned jams and jellies at the State Fair. Looks like she was never bored, that much is for sure."

"God, you wouldn't think he'd want to throw all this out," Mulder said in a wondering tone as he handed the trophy back and she replaced it in the box then stood up. "Wouldn't he want to keep at least some of this to remember her by?"

Just then the man in question drove up into the driveway in a small, sleek black Jaguar, parking beside the minivan. He all but leaped out of the car hurrying over to them with keys in hand. "Is something wrong? Did you find out who killed Crista?"

"No, sir, we'd like to talk to you alone," Scully said, meeting him at the base of the steps. "We've already met your sister and I don't think you—"

"She's helping me clean out Crista's things and I don't want to ask her to leave yet," he said, casting a glance at the house as Mulder walked up beside them. "Can we talk here?"

"If you insist," Mulder said, deciding to go for the blunt hit first. "First of all, were you aware that Crista sometimes dressed up as a bag lady and hung around downtown?"

Though he tried to look surprised, both agents could tell that he really wasn't. Mulder thought that even if he hadn't known details he'd had probably had his suspicions. "What? No, you've got to be mistaken!"

They glanced at each other then Scully said, "We've got eyewitnesses, plus we found her car in the bus station's long-term lot and her purse and suitcase in a coin locker at the bus station as well. The clothes you described her wearing on the day she disappeared were in the suitcase. Apparently she changed at the bus station and stored her good clothes there."

"Oh my God." Maitlin heaved a long sigh, looking down at the cement walkway between his feet. "I was afraid it was something like this. That's why I stopped her from working with… those people."

"You mean the homeless, at shelters and soup kitchens?" Mulder said.

"Well, yeah. She said she had a rapport with them and even wanted to go back to school for psychology so she could help council them, for God's sake! But I took her away from all that; she never had to be around them again. I made something of her; now I'll be the laughingstock of our friends and neighbors when word gets out, as it always does, and am probably going to have to move. I was hoping for a conductor's job with a larger orchestra, perhaps even the NSO, but now that's not going to happen."

"So you had no idea what she was up to?" Scully asked.

"I… suspected that she was doing more than shopping on those days she 'forgot' her portable phone, but I knew she wasn't having an affair and I guess I just didn't want to know," he said bitterly. "She certainly didn't have as many clothes as I thought she should with all the 'shopping' she supposedly did. I'm not all _that_ surprised to find this out."

Mulder nodded. "Well. At any rate, you can collect her things at the Hoover Building at your convenience. There's a suitcase and her—"

"I don't want them," he said firmly, glancing up at the tall agent. "You can just throw it all out. I'm getting rid of everything of hers; she had no family so it's all going to the dump where those other street creatures can have at it."

He turned and stomped away, the inner door opening and the blonde woman glaring out at them before he went inside and both doors closed firmly again.

The two agents looked at each other again. "Holy shit," Mulder finally said. "Speaking of being a wee bit bitter…"

Scully shrugged as she led the way down the walk to their pool car parked at the curb. "Sad to see that social standing means more to him than the memory of a woman he was married to for almost thirty years. Where to now?"

"I think we need to find out exactly where she hung out at when she was Bag Lady Crista as opposed to Grand Lady Crista," Mulder said. "We know it probably wasn't an attempted mugging or rape since a.) nothing was taken and b.) she likely would have kicked a rapist's ass. There were no defensive marks on her arms so she probably knew her attacker or was taken completely by surprise, right?"

"Right. It looks like they surprised her from behind but I would agree that she knew her killer. And the way she was bitten and torn up by teeth… it was hatred, Mulder, pure and unadulterated hatred. I agree that's what we're looking for, that was our killer's main reason."

"Do you think someone found out who and/or what she really was?" he mused, waving to the security guard at the entrance to the subdivision as they left it for what was likely the last time.

"Sounds plausible," Scully agreed. "Even if she was caught with the watch and earrings she forgot to take off and tried to say they were fakes, they were still obviously valuable. I'm still not sure why they didn't take her jewelry. I'm betting that's probably what happened; one of the other homeless she hung out with probably did her in out of sheer hatred and jealousy."

"And then took a few bites out of her because they were hungry?" Mulder shuddered. "That's the one thing I can never get my head around, cannibalism. Ugh."

"No, it wasn't a human being who made those bites, I suspect they might have been from a device of some kind," Scully said thoughtfully, gazing out the window at the scenery flying by as they got on the freeway. "Some type of fake teeth mounted on a hydraulic or pressurized—"

"That's a bit extreme, isn't it?" he said. "Wouldn't it more likely be a werewolf or urban yeti or something along those lines?"

"Oh, Mulder," she moaned, throwing her head back against the thankfully well-padded headrest. "Can't you give it a rest?"

"Don't start that with me, Scully," he said, irritated. "How many times has it been using _my_ theory that we found the culprit? Can you say fluke-man, vampire, liver-eater, demons, psychic photography, more than one shapeshifter that you _personally_ experienced—"

She huffed, annoyed that he dared bring up Eddie van Blundt. "And just as many times it's been something as simple as pure human fuckery," she said. "It isn't always aliens and monsters, Mulder."

"But sometimes it is and you know it," he pressed. "We need to consider both. What's more likely, Miss Occam's Razor, that there's a werewolf running around Baltimore or that someone made a pneumatic device with fake teeth to make us _think_ there was for God only knows what reason?"

"But Mulder, then—"

"Remember Ronnie Strickland," he said, bringing up his favorite argument. "Just because his fangs were fake didn't mean he wasn't a real vampire."

She threw her hands up, as always truly angered by him bringing up the Texas supposed-vampires. Again. "There's _still_ no proof that they were vampires, Mulder! You need to rein in your imagination. And on top of that—"

"How much more proof do you need? That damn sheriff you were so enamored with drugged you with knockout drops, for crying out loud!"

"Uh, Mulder?"

"What, Scully, you going to try and say the Fluke-man didn't really exist too?"

"No, I just wanted to let you know we just missed our exit."


	7. Chapter 7

***

Later that afternoon Scully was getting caught up on her report while Mulder restlessly paced the basement office. Finally she'd had enough and snapped, "Would you settle down!"

"I hate it when we hit dead ends," Mulder grumbled, going to sit in one of the chairs in front of the desk as she was using his computer. "We've got to be missing _something_, something that can lead us to whomever or whatever killed her."

Scully deliberately ignored the barb. "If you want we can go canvass the street people again when I'm done here," she said, half-seriously. "Didn't you want to try and find the one that pointed you to the bus station again?"

"I guess that's about as good as anything I can think of," he said dejectedly, picking at his watchband. "I really doubt he'll remember which bus she was getting on and even if he does, that doesn't mean it's where she was headed. She could have transferred to another bus, hell she could have gone to Harrisburg or Philly or New York City for all we know."

She let his grumbling flow over her, typing the last few lines then saving the file and telling the computer to shut down. A couple of minutes later she was still waiting for it to finish saving her document, never mind begin the shutdown process. "Jesus, this thing _is_ slow," she said with exasperation as she got up. "We could be halfway to Baltimore by now!"

"Hence my annoyance with it," he said, standing as well. "Ready?"

"Yeah, let's get out of here," she agreed, preceding him out of the office. "Next time I leave my laptop at home I'm going to swing by and get it instead of using your PC. I don't know how you live with that thing."

"From your mouth to the techs' ears," he said as they got in the Bureau car. This time they were back to the blue Taurus they'd had on Monday. "So, to the bus station? Or maybe where I found the homeless guy first?"

"Let's do the bus station, then we can go by Bayside," Scully suggested. "So, you have any plans for tonight?"

"Tonight? Nope. But if you're thinking about dragging me off shopping again, Scully, I'm sure I can think of something."

She laughed. "Nah, how about a quiet evening at home? Dinner and maybe some TV?"

"Your turn to make dinner, right?"

"Yep. Probably that pork chop and rice casserole you like, it doesn't take long."

"Then count me _in_."

She groaned at his pun and changed the subject.

***

"Wait—wait—back up!" he exclaimed with excitement, rolling the window down quickly and half hanging out of it. "Back, back!"

Scully pulled over and backed up to the corner they'd just passed. This was a no-parking zone, thankfully, but her maneuvers probably still were illegal. "What? Did you see him?"

"No—look at that street name!" he said, getting out of the car and pointing at the street sign behind them. Scully put the car in park but left it running; that was mildly less illegal as it was a no-parking, not a no-stopping or no-loading, zone. She got out carefully, making sure the driver's door was unlocked, and walked to the back.

"What about it?"

"It's the same name as the street Crista told people she grew up on—Hawthorn. Actually her mother lived under the overpass at the end of the street, but she always considered it the street she grew up on. Her _loving_ husband told me she used it as the password on her computer, that and the number eight for Eight Mile, which is the road the overpass was on."

Scully mulled it over for a few minutes. "It's not a main road, but it's a good-sized secondary street and not a side street," she said. "Worth checking out."

They got back into the car and Scully went around the block then made a right and began cruising slowly down Hawthorn Avenue. This was very much like the neighborhood she'd canvassed a couple of days ago, with rows of storefront businesses jammed together, most closed, all with bars on the doors and windows. Trash littered the streets, from blowing paper to bags of garbage spilling open from an alley onto the sidewalk. But there weren't many homeless; street people, yes, hanging out in front of some of the buildings but no one walking along pushing a shopping cart full of garbage or huddled partly in an alley with a bedraggled paper cup out just far enough to be seen. They passed a sleazy, closed-for-the-day strip club that reminded her of Dirty Dames though she didn't mention it.

The neighborhood was gradually beginning to improve when she pulled into the parking lot of a ratty-looking but clean party store. "I need a soda," she announced to Mulder's quizzical look as she unbuckled her seat belt. "Want anything?"

"Sure, get me one too," he said, slouching down in the seat. "Whatever you're having."

She went into the store, keeping an eye out for any homeless people but seeing none. After selecting two cans of Diet Pepsi she walked back to the counter and, on the spur of the moment, flashed her badge and identified herself, then pulled out the autopsy headshot of Crista van Adal and showed it to the clerk. "Would you happen to know this woman?"

"Ugh—what happened to her?" The middle-aged African-American man asked, wrinkling his nose. "Gee-ross."

"She was killed not far from here. We're hoping to find out where she hung out."

"She homeless?" the clerk asked. "Used to be lots of 'em around here, cops been chasin' 'em away the last coupla weeks. Bet the manager would know 'er, I only been workin' here a few days."

"Is the manager around?" Scully asked, feeling a worm of excitement awaken in her belly. Every bit of intuition she had was telling her that she was on the right track.

"Yep. Go to the door behind the Slushy machine an' knock."

As she turned away from the counter she heard the door open behind her and turned to see Mulder entering the store, looking at her quizzically. She waved him over and explained in a few words as they headed for the back of the store.

When the manager's office door was opened with an accompanying cloud of cigarette smoke they both had their badges out and Scully handed the photo to the stout but muscular Caucasian who peered out at them. "Oh yeah, that's ol' Ida," he said, tapping the picture with one nicotine-yellowed finger before giving it back. Ida, Scully remembered, had been Crista van Adal's mother's name. "She used to hang around with Nelda, who worked afternoons 'til I fired her for missin' three days straight after she gone on a bender."

"Where can we find this Nelda?" Mulder asked.

"Last I knew she had a 'partment over on Osgood, but I'm bettin' she been kicked out by now. Was always gettin' evicted an' movin'. You want her last address I got on file?"

"Yes, thanks," Scully said, glancing up at Mulder to see her own excitement mirrored in his expressive face.

Fifteen minutes later they climbed a rickety but wide flight of stairs to the second floor of the Montalba Apartments, three blocks from the party store in the direction of downtown. The building had obviously once been a mini-mansion now divided into eight low-rent apartments. This neighborhood was easily as dangerous and run-down as the one where Crista had been found; they'd been sure to lock the car and both unsnapped their holsters as they got out.

When they got to number two-oh-two Mulder moved to one side, letting Scully take the lead. She stood on the other side of the door, pounded on the peeling wood and called, "FBI! We need to speak to Nelda Cudalhy."

They both heard the unmistakable sound of a window sliding up and with a grimace Mulder stepped in front of the door as he reached under his suit jacket for his hip holster, lifting one wingtip-clad foot to kick it in. Scully immediately turned and ran for the stairs reaching for her gun.

It took two kicks for Mulder to get the door open and he immediately saw why the occupant had run: what was unmistakably a large bloodstain dried brown was spread over the dirty beige carpet in the living room. Someone had set a brass, glass-topped coffee table partially on it, which he found totally ludicrous.

It was a tiny square studio apartment with a bed in one corner, kitchen—such as it was—in the other, and a small bathroom almost directly behind the front door. After a quick but thorough check to make sure no one else was in the apartment he ran to the window and looked out, seeing no one in sight in the alley below. But as he watched Scully came marching around the corner pushing a much taller, whipcord-thin African-American woman in front of her. The other woman had her hands cuffed behind her back and, he noticed, the knees freshly ripped out of her baggy jeans. His partner was just finishing up the Miranda as they got close enough for him to hear her. "You need any help, Scully?" he called down.

"No—be fine—once I catch—my breath," she panted up to him, holding the woman with both hands on her wrists just above the cuffs. "Coming up there."

"I'm calling in the troops," he called back as he holstered his gun and pulled out his cell phone. "Found out where Crista van Adal was killed."

"That hoe deserve what she got!" the prisoner, presumably Nelda Cudalhy, snapped, lifting her head to glare up at him. "Bitch think she so much better than us, making fun of us by pretendin' to be one of us. Taught her stuck-up ass but good." She then seemed to realize that she might be saying too much and snapped her mouth shut.

Shaking her head Scully continued along, pushing Nelda down the narrow access passage between the apartment building and the one next to it as Mulder's head disappeared. "So you killed her?" she asked, still breathing heavy but no longer out of breath. The taller woman had longer legs but she hadn't expected Scully's flying tackle that had taken her down.

"Dint mean to, jes' wanted to teach her a lesson but I got a temper that gets outta control when I been drinkin'," she said unapologetically as they marched along the street in front of the apartment building to the entrance. The few people on the street stopped to stare before they went inside the structure. "Sorry bitch deserved it anyway."

Scully didn't answer as she pushed the suspect upstairs, already hearing sirens in the distance. Once in the apartment she shoved her none-too-gently onto the stained, threadbare couch and exchanged a look with Mulder. He had a pair of latex gloves on and was moving around the kitchen, not touching anything but clearly aware that he might do so inadvertently. "So you strangled and… ate her?" Scully forced herself to say, perching on the arm of the couch.

"_Ate_ her? I aint ate nobody, lady," Nelda said in clear disgust. "Dunno what you talkin' 'bout. Yeah, I lost my temper when I got her up here, but I dint do nuthin' else to her. Just got my boys to drag her outta here."

"Lost your temper?" Mulder repeated as he walked over to them. "I guess so, looking at this stain."

"You can't prove that's blood," the woman smirked.

"It certainly isn't a fine red wine stain," he retorted.

"Wait—wait," Scully said, putting her fingertips to her temples. "Are you sure we're talking about the same person here? Crista van Adal, the woman you knew as Ida?"

"Yeah, that her. Bitch pretended to be my friend an' then last week I seen her working in the soup kitchen over at St. Kate's , all dressed up an' snooty as hell. Lost my job an' she never came to see how I was, thought she was my friend. What the fuck, I don't care, I knifed that bitch 'fore she knew what was happenin. Don't nobody make a fool of Imelda Lizzy Cudalhy!"

"So you say you stabbed her, you didn't choke or bite her?" Mulder came over and stood above her, obviously looming threateningly.

"Naw, I woulden bite nobody. Don't know nothing bout no choking, either. I only sliced her coupla times, she was dead afore she hit the floor an' I doan care who knows it."

"I don't supposed you'd tell us who your 'boys' are who moved the body," Scully said tiredly.

"They my homies, good luck findin' out who," the other woman said, raising her chin stubbornly. "Shoot, I go down for murder I ain't takin nobody with me. They do me a favor gettin' rid of her. I got no clue what they did with her though obviously you done found her. Dint see nuthin' in the paper or on the news 'bout it, though."

Just then they heard the sirens stop outside the building and exchanged another glance; as Mulder would often say, curiouser and curiouser.

***

Driving home later that evening Scully looked over at him. "I don't know about you, Mulder, but I don't feel like cooking tonight even though it's my turn. How about I take you out to dinner and cook tomorrow night?"

"I'll take the dinner out but I'll cook tomorrow, you deserve another night off after chasing down that long-legged broad and catching her," he said with a grin. "Besides, while you were at the lab this afternoon I spent some time on the Internet looking up chicken recipes. I'm going to make a chicken and salsa dish to _die_ for."

"Dear God, I've created a monster," she mumbled, but was smiling all the same.


	8. Chapter 8

**Day 4  
**"I've got the preliminary report," Scully said, walking into the office just after eleven holding up a plain manila file folder. "You're going to love this one, Mulder."

His head popped up from behind his old, yellowed monitor. "I am, am I?"

"We went back over Crista van Adal's body—and, by the way, we got it back just before they were about to cremate it—and we agreed that there are stab wounds where the flesh is missing, though it wasn't immediately obvious due to the tissue damage. Cudalhy still swears she didn't do anything but stab her, and a dental cast has confirmed that those were not her teeth marks nor did her hands fit the bruises on Crista's neck. The jury's still out on whose those were as it stands."

"With a confession it shouldn't matter especially since they're postmortem, though I am curious as to what throttled and gnawed on her," he said in a distracted voice, his eyes on the screen in front of him. "And why choke her after she was dead?"

She frowned as she walked around the desk. "What's so fascinating on the computer, Mulder? You find more chicken recipes?"

"No, they replaced my PC!" he beamed. "Look at this, my email loads in less than five minutes!"

"What about my docking station?"

"Uh, they didn't say," he hedged.

"That means no," she sighed. Tossing the folder on the desk she added, "So I guess this one's wrapped up."

"I guess so. Although I was thinking… whatever ravaged her body after she was dumped must be—"

"Oh no, Mulder, uh-uh! You are not in any way, shape or form staking out that neighborhood. Besides if you're right and it is an urban Bigfoot or Jersey Devil or what not, it seems to go after carrion—"

"Jersey Devil? In Baltimore? I didn't think of that," he said happily, smiling up at her. "You da bomb, Scully."

She could only groan and move over to the table where her laptop was set up; eight years and counting and she _still_ didn't have her own desk. "So we've got the motive and the killer but no clue as to who ravaged her body after she was dumped. I guess we'll have to close it like this."

"Well I guess if you won't let me drag a corpse out of potter's field and stake out—"

She burst into laughter involuntarily. "I want to see your requisition form for that one!"

He stared at her blankly for a moment then also started laughing. It was this way that their boss found them, pausing in the doorway for a moment before saying dryly, "Something amusing, Agents?"

"Sorry sir, private joke," Scully said, wiping at her eyes delicately with her fingertips. "To what do we owe this honor?"

He leaned one shoulder against the doorway. "I came down to give you a heads-up. I know how much you two absolutely adore workshops and seminars and they're planning a Partners' Retreat for weekend after next. Might not be a bad idea for you to be out of town that weekend."

"Sir, I'd kiss you if I wasn't positive you'd knock me through the wall," Mulder said. "How about I put Scully up to it?"

Skinner ignored him, still speaking to the female half of the team. "And I also wanted to congratulate you on the swift resolution of the van Adal case. That was good work, Agents. Why don't you take the rest of the day off and I'll see you bright and early for that budget meeting tomorrow morning?"

Mulder shot to his feet and grabbed his suit jacket off the back of his chair. "You don't have to ask me twice," he said. "C'mon, Scully, get those little legs moving!"

She gave him an exasperated look. "I still have to shut down and pack my laptop, and I don't think the offer expires if we're not out of here in the next fifteen seconds," she said dryly and then turned back to Skinner. "Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome, Agents. See you in the morning."

Scully suspected that she still set a land speed record packing up and they were out of the office and on the way home within five minutes. It was a beautiful early autumn day, the sky clear with a few wispy clouds, the temperature perhaps sixty degrees with a light, gusty wind that occasionally made both of their unbuttoned jackets flap. She was glad they'd decided to walk today despite the weight of her laptop case dragging at her shoulder. "Gee, we have the whole afternoon to play—what thoo want to do, Beaver?" Mulder said with a bad lisp.

"Anything that stops you from talking like that."

He laughed. "Anything?" he leered down at her.

"Within reason," she said, thinking of some of the things he liked to do for recreation and deliberately ignoring his insinuation. "I may play baseball again someday but basketball is out of the question considering you did nothing but knock me down repeatedly."

"We could go home, change, and go for a run," he suggested. "We still haven't checked out that park over on Madison and it's been, what, six months we've been meaning to get over there?"

"No, after walking home I'm in for the day," she said. "Plus we went to the gym last night so I don't feel the need to work out any more. Hell, a bubble bath and a nap doesn't sound half bad—you came to bed pretty late, didn't you?"

"Yeah, well, when I got up to use the bathroom 'Godzilla vs. Megalon' was on and you were already dozing off," he said. "I still can't wrap my head around going to bed at ten o'clock even on a work night."

"And I'm not staying up half the night to watch bad movies, so we'll have to agree to disagree on that one," she said. "Besides, just because we live together doesn't mean we're joined at the hip."

They arrived home a few minutes later and with relief Scully set her laptop down in the foyer. Mulder disappeared upstairs and with a shrug she headed for the kitchen, thinking to make a cup of tea and perhaps relax in the tub with a book if he wasn't interested in her nap suggestion.

But no sooner had she kicked off her shoes, set her jacket over the back of a kitchen chair, and put out her cup and teabag then she heard Mulder calling her name. "I'm in here," she said, going to the kitchen doorway and looking out to see him coming across the dining room with a large white box in his hands. "What's that?"

"I was going to save it for a special occasion, but we don't celebrate Sweetest Day and Christmas is too far away, so here," he said, handing her the box then going over and shutting off the stove.

"Hey, I was making tea!"

"And now you're opening my present," he said as she set the box on the small square table. The kitchen table was from his apartment, whereas the dining room one was hers as it had leaves that could expand it to seat eight. He leaned on the back of one of the chairs as she lifted the lid off and then parted the tissue paper.

"Oh my God, Mulder, how did you know?" she breathed as she lifted the sweater out of the box. Although it wasn't the blue and white one she often eyeballed at the store it was indeed an expensive, imported Windfjord Lillehammer cardigan sweater of the exact type she'd wanted for a long time. "How did you know?!" she repeated, holding it up against herself.

"I saw how you looked at and handled the one we found in Crista's suitcase," he said, smiling and clearly pleased at her reaction. "But I like this color better than the black one she had."

Scully already had her blazer off and unzipped the sweater, pulling it on over her plain white blouse. She didn't bother to tell him that Crista's had been a very dark forest green, not black, but despite his colorblindness he'd nailed this one; the deep red with black trim and decorations went well with her coloring. "I… I don't know what to say, it's beautiful and I've always wanted one of these," she finally said, looking up at him. "Thank you. But it must have cost—"

"Uh-uh, not another word," he said, walking around the table and cupping her face in both hands then leaning down and giving her a kiss that lasted perhaps a bit longer than it needed to just to shut her up. When they came up for air he added, "When I think of all the times I wanted to get you something just for the hell of it and I couldn't because we were nothing more than partners, it makes me want to buy you everything you look at."

"Well don't do that, we still have bills to pay," she smiled up at him, holding him around the waist. "The thought's appreciated, Mulder, but _your_ birthday is next week, you shouldn't have gotten me this. I should be buying you--"

He shook his head. "Birthday schmirthday. Not another word, Scully. How about instead you _show_ me your gratitude?"

She bit her lip as she looked up at him doing his usual comical leer down at her. Normally when he did that she knew he wasn't serious and brushed him off, but for once she decided not to. _Need to keep him on his toes, keep him guessing just like he does me, _she thought with humor. Instead of giving him a look and moving away like she normally would have, she reached up around his neck and yanked him down to her, breathing the word "okay" before giving him a kiss that, by all rights, should have boiled the water in the kettle on the stove behind them.

Though he wasn't expecting her response Mulder wasn't slow on the uptake and crushed her against him, kissing her back with equal passion and forgetting that he'd been half-kidding when he'd made the offer.

Said kettle was forgotten as they moved across the kitchen, bumping into the counters and the table before stumbling through the archway into the dining room. When they came up for air Mulder said almost breathlessly, "Almost forgot—was gonna tell you—have the perfect case to get us out of town next weekend—it's—oooh,_ Scully!"_

"I don't know about you, but I'm done talking for the time being," she purred, dropping his suit jacket by the couch as they stumbled across the room to it. "Unless you'd rather let me thank you in words rather than actions for this beautiful sweater."

Like the remote had earlier in the week, Mulder's tie went flying over the back of the couch. "Talk? What's that?"

"That's the right answer."


	9. Chapter 9

**Epilogue**

"Mulder…? What the_ hell!?"_

"I'm fine, Scully, calm down, just a little bruised and a few cuts, nothing serious." He fended her off, flopping onto a kitchen chair.

She fussed around him, removing his leather jacket which was scratched and stained, checking the rips in his shirt and jeans, then going for her travel first-aid kit which was kept in the foyer closet for quick access in case of an unexpected trip. "What'd you do, go back to the 'hood and get in a rumble, or what?"

"Well, kinda, the former is correct anyway," he admitted, stretching one arm out so she could clean and disinfect a long, shallow cut on the back of his hand that went over his wrist and, going by the mark on his jacket sleeve, would have continued further up if not for the thick leather. "I _was_ back in the 'hood."

"This was one hell of a pickup game," Scully said drily.

"Er, no. You remember the, uh, joke about taking a corpse—"

"Mulder you didn't!" Scully glared at him, then swabbed a bit harder than necessary so that he yelped. Relenting, she put down the swab and picked up a butterfly bandage. "Okay, come on, give it to me."

He leered, but she wasn't buying it. "Well, see, there's this butcher over on M street who does special orders…"

She stared at him in horror. "You didn't get him to get you… human flesh…!"

"Oh god no, Scully! What do you think I am—or what do you think _he_ is might be a better question," he said. "No, he saved me some pig entrails wrapped in rancid hamburger, let it sit out at room temperature for two days in an airtight container, about the closest I could get to a rotting corpse. Whew, the stink when I opened that… but I digress."

She glanced at him from beneath her arched brows as she dipped a cotton swab into a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide. "Get on with it, rumble boy."

"So I took it to that house and—"

"You went back there?! At _night?"_ She wanted to take him by those broad shoulders and shake him but knew better by now. Nothing knocked any sense into that thick skull; God knew she'd been trying for years. "What were you _thinking_, Mulder?!"

"That I had to see what it was," he said honestly, holding her eyes with his. "Didn't you know I couldn't let it go like that?"

Scully sighed. "I should have, I just didn't think of it," she admitted. "Go on."

"Well, I put the bait in the living room then went and sat on the trapdoor steps that led to the attic, did you see that part of the house?"

She shook her head, dabbing at a scratch on the side of his neck as he tilted his late-night-stubbled chin out of the way. "No, nor do I ever want to."

"It's down a hallway from where I put the bait and out of sight of either door leading into the room. Plus I figured if I got sleepy waiting I'd fall off of it, there are no sides or railing," he added.

"I know the type of folding stairway you're talking about. So what happened?"

"Well, I fell asleep and didn't fall off, and next thing I knew I woke up and looked over and there was… something… hunched over the pig guts and making more disgusting noises than Frohike going at a plate of enchiladas."

Despite herself Scully was fascinated. "What was it?"

He sighed. "Well, I tried to get my flashlight out of my pocket but I dropped it…"

She stood up straight and glared at him. "And it attacked you?"

"Uh, no. It ran and I chased it."

"Oh for the love of… Mulder!"

"I caught it too, isn't that worth something, Scully?" he said hopefully.

"Not if it got away," she said drily.

"Well, not exactly, I meant to tell you…"

She stepped back, staring at him wide-eyed. "What?!"

He burst into laughter despite a bruise on his jaw which hurt when he moved his mouth that way. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding! No, it got away, but only because it had claws the size of bananas, I swear."

Her glare could have cut glass as she angrily packed up her supplies. "You are an asshole, Fox Mulder!"

"Hey, you're not done patching me up!"

"I am now! That goes far beyond a gotcha!"

As she began to stomp away he stood and wrapped his arms around her from behind, nuzzling her sleep-mussed hair above the satin collar of her pajamas. "You still love me."

She held herself stiffly although the warmth of his body was what she'd been missing when unable to sleep a short time ago. "Love has nothing to do with my tolerance for idiocy."

He laughed and held her close. "And that's why we're still together after all these years."

Surrendering, she turned in his arms and hugged him back. "It is indeed," she sighed. "Sit your ass back down, Mulder, and let me finish cleaning you up. If any of the bacteria from the spoiled meat got in these cuts, never mind what else…"

He grinned as he followed orders, letting her voice wash over him as she alternately scolded and soothed. Knowing that she would be here waiting when he got back from crazy adventures he didn't dare take her on was enough; looking forward to the ones she would join him on were even better.

_finis_


End file.
